Inspecting a SOAP envelope or a vendor's XML config that arrived as one minified line. Cleaning up an SVG so the path data is one element per line. Stripping pretty-print whitespace before sending XML over the wire. Sanity-checking that an XML file you generated is well-formed before handing it to a strict parser. Diffing two XML documents — pretty-print first, then diff the trees side by side.

Well-formed ≠ valid. "Well-formed" means the syntax parses (tags balance, attributes quoted, one root). "Valid" means it conforms to a DTD or schema. This tool checks well-formedness only — schema validation needs the schema file. Whitespace can be significant. In Alice the leading/trailing spaces are part of the value (XML defaults to xml:space="preserve" ). Re-indenting changes them. If your XML is whitespace-sensitive (XHTML , embedded code blocks), pretty-print is the wrong tool. Self-closing vs explicit empty. and are equivalent in XML but differ in HTML. The formatter normalises empty elements to self-closing form. CDATA, comments, and processing instructions are preserved. Their inner content isn't reformatted. Namespaces survive. xmlns:foo declarations and foo:bar qualified names round-trip without modification. Attribute order may shift. The XML parser doesn't strictly preserve attribute order across tools; if you're checksumming XML, canonicalise it first (XML C14N). Browser parser quirks. Different browsers report parse errors with different formats. The line/column extraction is best-effort and may show only the message on some browsers.

XML Formatter

Format and minify XML. Validate well-formedness with line and column on errors.

Input

Mode

Indent

Output

Enter input above to see the result.

What is this for?

XML is still everywhere — SOAP responses, configuration files, RSS/Atom feeds, SVG markup, OOXML innards. When you need to read, diff, or share a chunk of XML, the difference between a one-line minified blob and a properly indented tree is the difference between guesswork and reading. This tool pretty-prints any well-formed XML with configurable indentation, or minifies it for transport, and uses the browser's native XML parser to flag malformedness with a line and column where possible.

When to use it

Inspecting a SOAP envelope or a vendor's XML config that arrived as one minified line.
Cleaning up an SVG so the path data is one element per line.
Stripping pretty-print whitespace before sending XML over the wire.
Sanity-checking that an XML file you generated is well-formed before handing it to a strict parser.
Diffing two XML documents — pretty-print first, then diff the trees side by side.

Common gotchas

Well-formed ≠ valid. "Well-formed" means the syntax parses (tags balance, attributes quoted, one root). "Valid" means it conforms to a DTD or schema. This tool checks well-formedness only — schema validation needs the schema file.
Whitespace can be significant. In <name> Alice </name> the leading/trailing spaces are part of the value (XML defaults to xml:space="preserve"). Re-indenting changes them. If your XML is whitespace-sensitive (XHTML <pre>, embedded code blocks), pretty-print is the wrong tool.
Self-closing vs explicit empty. <br/> and <br></br> are equivalent in XML but differ in HTML. The formatter normalises empty elements to self-closing form.
CDATA, comments, and processing instructions are preserved. Their inner content isn't reformatted.
Namespaces survive. xmlns:foo declarations and foo:bar qualified names round-trip without modification.
Attribute order may shift. The XML parser doesn't strictly preserve attribute order across tools; if you're checksumming XML, canonicalise it first (XML C14N).
Browser parser quirks. Different browsers report parse errors with different formats. The line/column extraction is best-effort and may show only the message on some browsers.